


Battle Motley

by FflewddurFflambuoyant



Category: Elfen Lied, Gantz, Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Diclonii, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24653272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FflewddurFflambuoyant/pseuds/FflewddurFflambuoyant
Summary: This world was not made for Diclonii. It was not made for the super-powered, nor was it made for the powerless. And yet, in this world - this cruel world that cultivates anger and sorrow and desperation, the way a gardener cultivates tomatoes - the mysterious, unknowable entity known only as Gantz has pitted the surviving Diclonii against all humans (be they endowed with superpowers or not). That is the sad truth, with which Kei Kurono, Taylor Hebert, and Bando are now faced, and it is only by sticking together that they can survive . . . and maybe even bring back those they love.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 6





	1. Worlds Apart, But Equally Close To Death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShipMasterNepeta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShipMasterNepeta/gifts).



> Greetings, ye who are brave enough to walk through my den of bad writing (without so much as a hand to hold)! I hope that, whether or not you find my work objectively good, you at least find it subjectively engaging. Effectively, this is my second serious attempt at any kind of fanfiction (and the first that I felt foolhardy enough to share); I would say go gentle, but, if y'all did, I'd never grow as an author, so . . . have at it. Also, not that this affects much, but: so far, I've only read the first four arcs of Worm, and only the early volumes of Gantz (plus I've seen Gantz:O). The reason I bring this up is, if later arcs of either series completely invalidate the stuff I'm fixin' to do, I sincerely wouldn't know, and I apologize preemptively. Anyway, enjoy!

To say that Kurono was in a fugue state, would be an understatement that would make a method actor proud. No, Kurono wasn’t some smoky island, separated by an abhuman fog; he was a dark rain cloud, drifting through and amongst a thick, oppressing (and depressing) haze.

It’d been near enough seven days since Kato had died: that made for an average of 2.4 days for every stage of grief. But, if you’d told Kurono that, he would’ve broken out of his funk in less time than he would’ve broken your neck.

In fact, nothing of any greater influence than some mechanical habit had driven Kurono to the train station. Well, either that, or some morbid coping mechanism. After all, this was the exact same station where he and Kato had first died.

Kurono walked aimlessly, slowly through the station; the hour was sparsely populated. It seemed as if this week were one of the less heavily trafficked of the year, a rare occasion on which, to everyone’s disbelief, Tokyo looked like it was deserted.

Deserted, in this moment, except for a lone Buddhist monk, evangelizing amidst a miniscule group of lost youths. Kurono didn’t know why this one, solitary devotee caught his attention. Nor did he know that he’d approached the man, until the previously-receptive youths scurried away. Then, in a moment of quasi-clarity, Kurono realized that he had the monk’s robe iron-tight in his fist.

“What the hell?” he muttered, feeling his scowl turn into a scrunch, feeling blind fury capitulate to confusion. “Wha-what the hell are you doing?!” Kurono half-shouted at the frightened monk, shifting the blame for his behavior. “Pfft! Leave me alone,” he added, releasing the man and turning away.

Just then, he sensed it. “ _ Time at last, _ ” he thought, as the crown of his head started disappearing, as if beamed away painlessly by some laser. “ _ I need to start keeping a better track of time. _ ” Now, it was the monk’s turn to replace his current emotions with confusion; he rubbed his eyes, but all that accomplished was him missing the last seconds of Kurono’s transportation. Pretty soon, this thoroughly befuddled monk was left alone, inside the grimy station.

Kurono materialized inside the apartment. “ _ And I thought the station was empty, _ ” he thought, taking in the palpable quiet of the room.

Shedding his clothes, Kurono - naked, except for the reassuring, skin-tight suit - walked lazily across the familiar floor, in this familiar apartment, to the familiar black orb. Familiar: whoever said the  _ familiar _ is what we view the most fondly?

Kurono sat down, squatting Indian-style in front of the giant Gantz ball. He pretended that this unknowable orb had a face, and he pretended to stare daggers at that face.

“Kato’s gone,” he said to no one in particular, “. . . I wonder who’ll ‘take his place’. . . Well, Gantz?” he said, now addressing someone in particular. “Who’re you gonna send to ‘replace’ Kato, huh? Who?” Silence; uncaring, lofty silence. “Fegh! Like I expected an answer.” So saying, Kurono turned his gaze over to the window; somehow, that ghostly, splotchy blackness out there . . . it was a hell of a lot more comforting, a hell of a lot more ‘familiar’, than Gantz. “ _ Now, I’ll have to face it alone, _ ” Kurono thought.

Just then, a noise took possession of Kurono’s concentration, a noise even more ‘familiar’. “ _ Huh. Didn’t take nearly as long as I thought. _ ” Scooching around (and shuffling subconsciously out of Gantz’s way), Kurono readied himself for the sight of a new contestant. But . . . how was he supposed to greet this person? How was he supposed to talk to them? How was he supposed to  _ begin _ to fill them in?

“ _ Kato always had a way with the newbies, _ ” he reflected, observing the teleportation with feigned indifference; if he had truly been indifferent, though, he wouldn’t have noted the horizontal, suspended entry of the new Gantz contestant. “ _ Must’ve fallen off a building, _ ” he thought, minimally (but, all the same, curiously).

He sat silently, absent-mindedly, for the rest of this newcomer’s transportation. The butchery, blue schema of the transportation, well . . . it held a fixation for Kurono that it never did before. For the first time in . . . ever, Kurono truly observed the person, as they entered the Gantz apartment for the first time. He observed the new recruit, and . . .

“ _ What the hell?! _ ” he thought, seeing the entirety of the newcomer’s bug- and arachnid-themed apparel for the first time. “. . . Wh-who’d you pick  _ this _ time, Gantz?”

“ _ I guess that whole ‘life flashes before your eyes’ thing is all bullshit, then, _ ” Taylor thought. Or, rather, didn’t think. She didn’t have time to think; the world didn’t exactly convert to slow-mo, as Tattletale came flying towards her.

From the moment that Glory Girl hurled Lisa’s body through the air - like an Irishman channeling a layoff into a good game with the boys - to the moment that Lisa’s body struck Taylor full-on, little to nothing else happened, either outside or inside Taylor’s mind.

Glory Girl must’ve realized too late that she’d aimed so high. Taylor’s broken neck didn’t stop her from pouncing the moment that both Undersiders were down (one of them for the long count). Still, there was hardly any glory to be found in arresting a person who was too stiff to fit into a pair of handcuffs. So, for an unprofessional instant, Glory Girl let up and backed away, enthralled by the image of her doing. Similarly, Panacea stood agape, stunned by the extra, unlawful step her sister had finally taken.

On cue, Tattletale’s power informed her that the superheroines would be distracted for a brief period of time. Using this knowledge, she scurried away, thinking she might regroup (or at least catch her breath) in one of the empty rooms down the hall.

Meanwhile, Taylor continued to fall. True, she was done _physically_ falling, and her soul wasn’t ready to be atlatl-ed into Hell just yet . . . No, when she fell, she fell back-first onto a plain carpet, in an all around plain apartment, somewhere in Tokyo.


	2. The New Recruit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, you trudged through my lackluster first chapter, eh? Well, I hope you enjoy this second one. I'm thinking I'll start devoting entire alternating chapters to the third-person-limited of each main character henceforth, rather than divide each chapter in two. Either way, please let me know what y'all think o' this so far (I'm dreadfully curious). And, to reiterate, enjoy!

Before anything else, Taylor’s brain computed that her back was as panged as a tragic hero. After that, her brain managed to process that she was lying supine. And that she was staring up at a ceiling. In an apartment. An apartment she’d never been in before.

“What the fuck?!” Taylor panted. “What the . . . hell happened?” Slowly, she sat up on the balls of her hands. “ _Where am I?_ ” she thought, looking to her left (and seeing nothing but a blank wall and the opening to a short corridor). “ _Where’s Grue, and Lisa, and Alec, and Bakuda, and . . .?_ ” Just then, someone spoke.

Taylor wheeled around, faster than a skydiver on Jupiter. To her right, she saw a young man, a young Asian man in a skintight black suit, sitting slightly apart from a giant, stationary black ball. Still not fully out of the fight-or-flight mentality, Taylor backed up at an angle, barging into a corner of the room: the corner of the room where the window met the first of four nondescript walls.

In her panicked state, Taylor saw through the wall-sized window, noticed the many stories’ worth of drop outside, and failed to notice her own reflection. Thinking that she was about to fall, she scuttled away again, this time bumbling to her feet and hugging the wall opposite the window. The young man spoke again.

“ _What the . . .?_ ” Taylor thought, when she realized she couldn’t understand what the fellow had said. Turning to face him, she calmed her lungs as if they were a light. Then, stepping forward a meager few steps, she stopped and asked the man plainly, in perfectly elocuted, enunciated, king’s English:

“Where am I? What happened? Where’s Glory Girl?”

In response, all that Taylor got was a double blink and a single, confused word from the fellow. “English?”

“A- . . . -merican, actually,” said Taylor, not fully grasping the language disparity. “Now, answer me,” she added, with a little more force. The young man answered her, but not in any tongue she could comprehend. Not even in a tongue she could’ve discerned: it could’ve been Japanese or Chinese or Korean or whatever, for all she knew.

The young man stood up, looking between Taylor and the black ball. He spoke again, this time a little less mesmerized and a little more agitated. Curiously enough, he seemed to be talking more to the _ball_ than he was to her.

“Hey! Listen,” she said, trying to regain his full attention, “I don’t have time for this.” So saying, she reached inside the nifty little hidey hole in her costume, and she removed her pepper spray (this kid didn’t appear dangerous enough to warrant the knife). “If you’re one of Bakuda’s boys, I’m not playing with you.” She extended the canister, like a duelist waiting for the end of a countdown; the young man’s attention was hers, though he seemed oddly apathetic. “Now,” said Taylor, lowering her voice (and projecting it, just in case her mask had absorbed the bulk of her words before or something), “I’ll just once more: where. The hell. Am I? And where. The hell. Is everyone? Tell me!”

Just then, a pair of wracks burst out of the side of the giant ball. Taylor nearly jumped at the sudden sound, but the boy came across as . . . _resigned_ , like a sailor who’d known for a week that he was destined to be hanged the moment he made port, but who still was happy to have the long, arduous, tedious channel behind him. In fact, without really looking, the young man walked over to one of the wracks, and he lazily removed a curious black object.

Taylor didn’t realize it was a gun ‘til the young man holstered it. And she didn’t think to maybe subdue the guy (with perhaps her pepper spray or her baton, now that he was weaponless) ‘til after he’d bent down, rummaged around for a moment, and then come back up with a funny-looking briefcase.

With a word - a word that, naturally, Taylor couldn’t understand, even if she could interpolate - the young man handed her the case. Or, more like, he held it out to her. When it became clear that she was too wary for that, he simply set it down in front of her. Opening the latch, he indicated a bundle of strange material, and then he pinched the material of his suit by way of explanation. Then, he walked back over to the giant ball.

He sat down again, this time facing the weird fixture. He didn’t move, didn’t say a word, didn’t _do_ anything. Not letting go of her pepper spray (nor her aim), Taylor knelt beside the opened case, cautiously removing the material. She eyed the stuff peripherally.

It was a suit, a suit just like the young man’s. “ _Does he . . . want me to wear it?_ ” she thought, looking between the Asian fellow - or, more specifically, the revealing curvature of his clothing - and the wardrobe selection she held in her hand.

At first, Taylor didn’t know what to make of it all; as she hypothesized, as she mulled over everything in her head like a Swedish wine, a couple of sickening thoughts crept into her mind. “ _Lung and Bakuda and their like are known to traffic in women: maybe I’ve been teleported into one of those . . ._ places _they send the girls to,_ ” she thought, with a curdled stomach, “ _hence the skimpy clothing. . . But, no, that doesn’t make sense: why isn’t there someone here to, ya know, break me in? Hell, why aren’t there_ more _victims? I know for a fact that Lung had a thriving business before I knocked him out of commission. And I doubt Bakuda was any more scrupulous about that side of things._ ”

Once more, she took in the young man fully. As fully as she could, considering his back was to her. Another thought occurred to her.

“ _Maybe he’s a cape, and this suit has something to do with his power. . . Nah, that wouldn’t make sense either: he’s not even covering his face. Still,_ ” she thought, eyeing the suit in her hand with delicate suspicion, “ _better safe than sorry. Besides,_ ” she thought, as she threw the garment to the side, “ _I can’t see any reason why I’d need it._ ”

For good measure, she decided she ought to examine the case a little more thoroughly, before she dealt with the other occupant of the room. Apart from a white label (with the words ‘Miss Bug Eyes’ scribbled childishly on it), the case was plain, and it was empty. That is, except for one other thing.

When Taylor pulled it out and examined it, she came to the conclusion that it was a headset, complete with a microphone and a pair of lenses. Although, something about the design still made her hesitant to name it such. On whim, a whim she’d never be able to explain, she decided to put it on. To her surprise (a muted surprise, to be certain), it fit perfectly over her masked head, no adjustments required.

Suddenly - and Taylor couldn’t imagine how she’d been so absentminded - she remembered that there was a corridor behind her. “ _A way out?_ ” she wondered. When she turned around, the opening to the hallway was still there; when she peered cautiously in, craning her neck around the wall, a door was there too.

“You won’t get out that way, but feel free to use the space to change. I won’t look.”

Taylor wheeled around again. For the most part, she was shocked that the young man had known where she was snooping without even peeking over his shoulder to check on her. But, in addition, she was also just a little furious at the young man.

“So,” she said hotly, approaching him, “you _can_ speak English then, can you?”

This time, the young man _did_ turn around, the better to look up at her with a bewildered face. “Speak English? We’re not speaking English, you dumb bitch. I should be the one saying, ‘so, you can speak Japanese then, can you?’”

That did it. Taylor didn’t have time for this bullshit. She didn’t have time for the young man’s infuriating aloofness, she didn’t have time to stick around and wait for some trap to be sprung, and she didn’t have the patience to make time. She wanted answers: simple, sweet, straightforward answers, and this guy wasn’t giving any to her. Perhaps she needed to be a touch more . . . _firm_ with him.

Switching her pepper spray to her left hand, Taylor stuck her right hand inside her pouch. Bypassing the baton entirely, she took hold of the knife. She removed it, and the effect was pretty much instantaneous.

The young man leapt to his feet, propelling himself a good few feet away from Taylor in the process. Simultaneously, he drew his gun and aimed it at her. From the way he braced himself, Taylor surmised that he had some experience with firearms. If that even _was_ a real firearm, it looked so whacked out.

“Listen, lady,” said the young man, “the last thing I wanna do is get into a fight with some bug-themed cosplayer, especially right before Gantz sends me out, so just put the knife away and get dressed already. The others are bound to be arriving soon, and, trust me, you don’t want to go out on your first Gantz mission without a suit.”

Taylor was stunned by the young man’s sudden investment in the situation, but not so stunned that she couldn’t express her mounting confusion and aggravation. “What the _hell_ are you rambling about? What’s Gantz? What mission? Wha- . . .?” Just then, her words were interrupted by a song.

A half-confused, half-worried expression overtook the young man’s face; he lowered his gun, and he turned to face the giant ball. “No,” he said, barely above a whisper, “it can’t be. Not already. This can’t be happening so soon.”

Taylor followed his eyeline to the surface of the giant ball, even as she kept her knife and canister at a usable poise. “What?” she said, before it dawned on her that there was an image plastered on the front of the spherical object. An image of a young girl with pink hair (done up in a country-style double braid) and, more strikingly, a pair of horns atop her head.

There was also a series of kana below and beside the image. However, right before her eyes, they seemed to translate themselves, spinning and spiraling and flipping. In the course of the transformation, the written characters revealed themselves to be newly-made English lettering, allowing Taylor to read.

Before she got a chance to peruse the words properly, the young man spoke up again, this time more hotly. “Gantz, you miserable bastard! You take away Kato and Kishimoto and all the rest, and you give me only _one_ replacement? What the hell?!” And then, right after the young man finished his infuriated sentence, a third voice spoke up.

It was a muffled, semi-robotic voice that came from nowhere in the room - at least, nowhere that Taylor could see - and what it said . . . _unsettled_ Taylor. She was beginning to suspect that this was going to be _worse_ than having to face Bakuda’s small army, and she was beginning to suspect that she wouldn’t put this behind her any time soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like, if I may, to address two matters before we recommence with this story:  
> a) if you believe that I ought to read up on over a million and a half words worth of source material just to be able to write one character in a harmless fanfic, then I have a bridge you might be interested in buying . . . in Terabithia (where, your doctor tells me, you’ve been spending a great deal of time lately)  
> b) if you truly think that the core premise of this crossover is so fundamentally flawed that I should just stop right now, then I have one word for you: enjoy!

“Oh, no,” said Kurono. “No, no,  _ no _ ! I am  _ not _ letting you do this to me, Gantz! Not over my twice-dead body!” Converting the rest of his breath into a protracted wail of rage, Kurono levelled his gun at the giant black orb, opening fire on his invulnerable ringleader. Obviously, he knew in his pit that it wouldn’t affect Gantz in the slightest, if his breakdown last week had been anything to go by. No, he simply needed to show Gantz that he wasn’t going to go gentle into that good night . . . even as the countdown appeared, letting him know that he would soon be whisked away easily into the surrounding nocturnal urbanity.

Sure enough, Gantz suffered nary a mark of damage, not even a scuff; Kurono sighed and hung his head. “So, wait . . . that thing’s not even real?” That new girl said. Kurono lifted his head and looked over at her.

She was still clutching that knife of hers in a defensive position, and the edge in her voice was ever-apparent. All the same, he got the impression - mainly from the body language that she mumbled from beneath her freaky costume - that she had calmed down somewhat, in stark contrast to himself. He was sorely mistaken.

“Alright, that’s it,” she said. “I’m not wasting another minute here, entertaining some dork with a toy gun.” A second and a half later, and Kurono could’ve sworn that there was a loud knock on the window. Well, no way in hell he was gonna let his guard down around  _ this _ psycho, so he neglected to look. That is, until after the same knocking sound both repeated and intensified, and  _ especially _ after the girl looked genuinely slammed by . . . whatever it was she was staring at over his shoulder. Kurono chanced a look-see out the corner of his eye.

“What the hell?” he said, right about the same time that his new teammate did. For, as it happened, just outside the window, there was a massive swarm of assorted insects. In swirling droves, they were hovering one moment and then ramming into the glass the next, only to chip away dead or else double back for a second strike: a living, multifaceted battering ram.

“Why are they all ganging up on the glass?” the new girl wondered aloud. “Most of them should be coming through the cracks and the flooring right now.”

“Cracks? There aren’t any cracks in this place,” Kurono explained, not fully capable of processing what in the world was going on, but more than capable of reminding himself that he’d seen crazier and leaving it at that. “Gantz here keeps a tight ship, sadly.” So saying, he turned to face the girl once more, gesturing to the sphere in the process. He was about to say something else to the same whiny effect, but then . . .

The girl backed away, as if propelled by a silent gasp. That, combined with the glow he could just see emanating from the brow above his eyeline, told Kurono all he needed to know.

“It’d begun,” he said. “Now, come on: hurry up and get the suit. You won’t have time to change here and now, but you might have time out in the field, before we stumble on our target.” Ah, yes, the target. The target? The target! “ _ Oh, fuck! _ ” Kurono thought, as he spun around, looking for his jacket.

The teleportation haze was beginning to cut off his vision just a little, and his fingertips were starting to go as well, but if he could just. Reach. The . . .

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” he muttered, as his hands and eyes disappeared out of the room entirely, right before he could snag the locator, or even the jacket in which he’d pocketed it. “Quick,” he said, hoping that girl would obey in the heat of the moment, “grab your suit, grab my jacket, and grab a gun, before Gantz sends you out too.” By now, his feet, legs, and arms had all joined him on the unfamiliar street, but his ears stayed behind a moment longer.

“Why?” he heard the girl say. “I’ve already got a suit, and you’re just being teleported; don’t be such a . . .” And, now his ears had joined him. Well, his mouth was still lingering behind in the apartment.

“Don’t ask stupid questions, just grabb the stuff! We ain’t got ti- . . .!” And, there went his mouth. Pretty much his entire head had joined him in the outside world; all he was really waiting on was his torso . . . and that new recruit. “ _ Please grab the gear, please grab the gear,  _ please  _ grab the gear. _ ” So went his silent chant. A few seconds later, his entire body had joined him, and he decided to drop the internal prayer for just a moment, while he scoped his new surroundings out.

Gun at the ready, he took in the environment: a rough approximation of suburbia. That is, the type of suburbia that suburbanites always yearn for, namely a neighborhood that mimics the country, whilst lying near enough to the dense culture of the city. Kurono suspected that Gantz had sent him to the exurbs of Tokyo.

“ _ Good, _ ” he thought. “ _ That means the target won’t have as many places to hide. Even if that girl  _ doesn’t  _ do as I said, we should be able to find that pink-haired bitch in no time. _ ” As it happened, though, that girl  _ had _ gone ahead and grabbed his jacket.

Her hand wasn’t the first thing of hers to appear on the scene, but it was the first thing of hers that Kurono noticed. In that hand, she held his raiment by the bunched-up collar. Kurono sighed with relief, despite the fact that, as he noted, she still hadn’t picked up her suit. Fed up with being agitated, he went over to a tree to wait for the rest of her.

Once her head and arms had fully appeared, she looked around until she saw Kurono. “Here,” she said, tossing his garment to him. “Must’ve been important,” she muttered, as Kurono received the jacket and inspected the pockets (satisfied with what he found). “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” by now, practically all of this newcomer had materialized, “I’m a little tired, a lot confused, and enough annoyed that I’mma just, ya know, go home now.” Then, more to herself, she said, “Maybe I can find some new clothes at a shelter and then, I dunno, find the nearest U.S. embassy?” With that, and the last of her flesh returned, she started to walk away into the night.

“Wait!” Kurono called out. “You can’t leave! Not ‘til the target’s dead, that is. Gantz won’t let you.” This earned him nothing but an evil eye from his new teammate. That is, he  _ presumed _ it to be an evil eye; that damned mask did a good job concealing her face.

“I’m not about to stick around and play your games, guy,” she called back, more slowing down than stopping. “Some of us have actual problems they gotta deal with, before they can monkey around.”

“Actual problems?” Kurono scoffed. “Need I remind you that you’re dead?”

“Oh, right.” The girl rubbed her head something tragic, recalling the obvious, overarching concern; this time, she  _ did _ officially stop. “I should probably ask before I forget: are  _ you _ technically dead, too?”

“Gantz brought me back: same as you, same as everybody else. Only, unlike you, I’m smart enough to not get myself killed a second time by walking away from a mission and incurring the wrath of Gantz.”

“Oh? Is that so?” That (presumable) evil eye was back on the girl’s face. She turned around, the better to give Kurono her full, furious attention, and said, “Can’t be that smart. ‘Cause, the way I see it, you’re within twain inches of death, if you don’t shut the fuck up and let me leave.” In response to this, the girl got an unexpected response.

“You mean the redback that’s slowly climbing down its web towards me?” Undoubtedly, the boyish grain in Kurono’s voice made him sound apathetic to the ears of his new teammate. He was beginning to suspect that this whackadoo had some connection to the bugs, as the miniature beast seemed to pause in its descent, as if willed to stop for a short powwow.

Kurono imagined the effect he’d had on the girl was magnified by one tinsy, winsy, truthful tidbit that he hadn’t so much as turned his head to see the spider emerge in the first place. And he continued to not look its way, self-assured that the arachnid was as stationary as his new, ornery teammate. Meanwhile, he took advantage of her slight dumbfoundment, and he levelled his gun. Not at her, but at the spider.

“Your toy gun’s not gonna save you if you keep pushing me, pal,” the girl stated, somewhere between ‘plainly’ and ‘with mounting stress and anger’.

By way of answer, Kurono simply pulled the trigger. As if willed back into action, the spider started down once again.

“That discount laser tag outfit isn’t gonna protect you from her bite, pal,” said the girl. She was about to go into her spiel about the venom of these fuckers and their influence on the little matter of life and death. However, about a half an inch away from Kurono’s shoulder, the spider exploded. Little bits of it went everywhere, and the girl was left bewildered.

“Still think it’s just a toy, sweetie?” said Kurono.

“But . . . the . . . that giant ball.” The girl resorted to clutching her hair, unironically. “It didn’t work there?” With a wry smile on his face, Kurono stepped away from the tree. His smile lasted only as long as it took him to reach inside his pocket. “ _ Damn it, _ ” he thought, as he checked himself out in a glimpse. “ _ I look like a fucking fruit, wearing nothing but the suit under this. Ah, hell, I dunno; if I’m lucky, she might be into that fruity look. Her figure’s not much, compared to Kishimoto’s or Sei’s, but she’d do, so I’d hate to make a bad first impression or nothin’. _ ”

Pulling out the locator, he fired it up and got a reading on the target’s location, a ways away. “Let’s go,” he said. “If we walk, I’ll have enough time to fill you before we find that pink-haired girl we’re supposed to kill. It might even be enough time for  _ you _ to explain a few things.” At that, he started walking down the lonely street, in the general direction of the miss pink-hair’s lair (according to the beeping of the locator). “I’m Kei, by the way. Kei Kurono,” he said over his shoulder. Begrudgingly, the girl at last jogged to catch up with him.

“You first explain things first, pal,” she reciprocated, just as blandly. “And forgive me, if I don’t trust you with my real name just yet.”

“So, let me get this straight,” said Taylor, lagging a couple of steps behind. “This ‘Gantz’ thing resurrects people and makes them hunt down aliens for points like a gameshow; there  _ are _ aliens to hunt down in the first place, but your world has no known superheroes nor supervillains running amuck; the split in the fabric of space and dimensionality - which, presumably, spat me out here - has never been spotted by anyone in your world, to your knowledge; and, on top of all that, throughout this weird, twisted, gameshow-esque bloodsport, we only have a couple of hours to take down our target, and you’re used to needing pretty much the whole time lot,  _ with _ and entire team of people to back you up and not just one amateur cape?”

“. . . Yeah, sure, ‘bout sums it up, I guess.” So saying, Kurono examined the locator, more preoccupied with the beeping dot and the blinking data than he was with the mutual interrogation, which was finally coming to a close. “We may not need that much time to find our target, though,” he amended. “I think she’s behind . . .  _ that _ house.” He pointed his gun-hand in the direction of an unassuming, somewhat airy-looking place off to the side. “With any luck,” he said, pocketing the locator, “we can take her down in a few minutes.”

“There’s probably a twist,” Taylor offered, bleakly.

“Probably,” Kurono agreed, “but ya gotta find room for hope, or else this Gantz thing starts to get to you. So,” he said, glancing Taylor’s way, “you have any, ya know, compunctions about killing? (Any more than you’ve got about sharing your name?)”

“Not when it’s absolutely life-and-death,” Taylor conceded. “You claim that Gantz will kill me if I don’t take part.”

“Gantz’ll kill you if you  _ run away _ ,” Kurono clarified. “If you just hang back and do nothing while I kill the target myself, then Gantz will return you to the room, only without any points. Of course,” he said, returning his gaze to the house and picking up pace slightly, “using that ‘superpower’ of yours will get us back to the apartment quicker.”

“No doubt,” Taylor said, catching up, “but I’m just a  _ wiiittle _ reticent about killing people who haven’t wronged me, and all. Just a touch.”

Suddenly, Kurono hugged the side-wall of the house, beckoning his teammate to follow suit, while throwing an index finger over his lips. “. . . Not ‘people’,” he whispered, after a short time. “They’re  _ definitely _ not people. Don’t you hear them? I do.”

Taylor tried. “No,” she whispered back, “but, then again, I  _ am _ wearing a full helmet.”

Kurono checked to make sure his gun was deady-ready; as he did, he asked, “You think you can hang up your morals long enough to help me make this kill? Get us back alive before we tempt fate?” Reassured that his gun was fully operational, he turned an eye toward Taylor, an eye that was as cynical and pleading as an abducted crime lord bargaining for his life.

“Not in a million years,” Taylor answered, staunchly but quietly. “I’m many things, pal, but I’m  _ not _ a murderer.”

“. . . I bet a hellish nightmare abomination, with the strength of five gorillas and a regeneration factor to die for, raring to rip out your throat with the panache of a Bond villain might change your mind,” Kurono said, smiling faintly, despite himself.

“Maybe,” said Taylor, “but you’ll have no help from me in this, okay?” All the same, she seemed to reclaim her more battle-friendly grip on her knife, and a number of spiders and hornets could be seen congregating low to the ground. “I should inform you,” she added, “I’m able to get a pretty good (and pretty literal) feel for a place through my bugs. I sent a handful of them around back on the other side of the house, and none of them are picking up on any humanoid beings. A lot of semi-human shapes, maybe, it’s a little fuzzy, but certainly no living, breathing flesh: just a bunch of dirt and grass and clay and wood and cold and the like.”

“The target probably ducked inside for a moment,” said Kurono. “Either she’ll come out to face us when we arrive on the scene, or else we’ll surprise her through the backdoor. Now, count of three, we run out onto the back patio and unleash hell.”

To this, Taylor nodded, tacking on, “You charge in, I cover you,” as an afterthought and a counteroffer.

“That works too,” said Kurono. Then, lending his ear to the wall, he mused, “Perhaps you  _ won’t _ have to do any killing, then. If you let  _ me _ have all the fun. I hear it again. Ready?” She was; going off her second nod, he said, more quietly than before, “Three. Two. . .  _ One _ .” And then, with that, they both pounced. On the patio, they came across . . . nothing.

“What the? It’s just a bunch of sculpture,” said Taylor, slightly above a whisper, and she was right. A myriad of variously-proportioned statues of, from what either contestant could glean, a bevy of biblical and otherwise ancient figures. All scattered across the yard, all silent as the grave, and all as unlikely to attack as a sleeping faun.

“I don’t understand,” Kurono muttered, fumbling around for the locator. “It said she’d be here, and I swear I heard a voice coming from around h- . . .”

“Behind you!” Taylor whispered as loudly as possible. Kurono and she rotated like dervishes on crack, the former bracing himself for balance and poising his gun for minimal kickback, the latter taking up a more supportive position apart from Kurono. Taylor had, at long last, heard someone moving about, and she’d wasted no time in alerting the team veteran, rather than get visual confirmation on her own.

However, now that they’d whirled around, she was a bit surprised to find a young lady who looked in  _ no _ way like the pink-haired, horned girl from the picture. She was all the more surprised, after a moment or two, to hear her partner say dumbly:

“Ki- . . . Kishimoto?”


End file.
